VisAD is a Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

 component library

Component-based software engineering

Component-based software engineering is a branch of software engineering that emphasizes the separation of concerns in respect of the wide-ranging functionality available throughout a given software system...

 for interactive and collaborative visualization

Scientific visualization

Scientific visualization is an interdisciplinary branch of science according to Friendly "primarily concerned with the visualization of three-dimensional phenomena , where the emphasis is on realistic renderings of volumes, surfaces, illumination sources, and so forth, perhaps...

 and analysis of numerical data. It combines a flexible data model

Data model

A data model in software engineering is an abstract model, that documents and organizes the business data for communication between team members and is used as a plan for developing applications, specifically how data is stored and accessed....

 and distributed objects

Distributed object

The term distributed objects usually refers to software modules that are designed to work together, but reside either in multiple computers connected via a network or in different processes inside the same computer. One object sends a message to another object in a remote machine or process to...

 (via Java RMI) to support sharing of data, visualizations and user interfaces between different data sources, different computers and different scientific disciplines.

VisAD is the basis of the Integrated Data Viewer

IDV

The Integrated Data Viewer from is a Java based software framework for analyzing and visualizing geoscience data. The IDV release includes a software library and a reference application made from that software...

, McIDAS V

McIDAS

McIDAS, the "Man computer Interactive Data Access System", is a pioneering weather forecasting tool developed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the 1970s and used continually to this day. In its early incarnations it was widely used to generate graphics for television stations, but today is...

and other systems.

External links

• VisAD Home Page
• History of Vis5D and VisAD